Photo Tips and Tricks - Part 3

Even in the world of social media and handy apps to help you along with uploading photos,  I shy away from relying on those types of photos as my copy.  You can download a photo right off Facebook or the internet but it's not going to be the best quality.

Instagram is an interesting photo program that Facebook recently purchased.  It can give a photo that nostalgic 1970s color photo effect.   I must admit to having plenty of photos with that effect in my own personal photo album from my childhood.  I don't need more plus I wouldn't want to apply that "effect" to photos found on my family tree.  That's just my personal preference plus those photos in my own personal album look that way because they are faded and old.

Preservation and, in some cases, restoration of an old photo is necessary.  That's where Photoshop and Adobe Photoshop Elements comes in handy.  For me, I can pluck a photo off the internet, from an email or scan an old photo and, basically, make it look better.  I have zoomed, cropped, and retouched photos to my delight.  The basic functions included in Photoshop Elements make it fairly easy for anyone to enhance a photo.  The following was literally thumbnail in printed form found in my grandma's album.  It's amazing what zoom and resizing the photo can do.

Mary Borchers ------ Maria Luise Katharine Vienop, Circa 1900

Now actually fixing a photo, can be a little more involved.  My MIL asked my husband to see what he could do with an old photo of his great grandfather.  The photo was at least an 11 X 17 and had a rather large tear in it that crossed the portrait up to the check of his great grandfather.   What a shame this would be without Photoshop.

Armed with a plan and technology, my husband first tried to scan the photo but that did not produce a workable result.  Next,  he laid the photo flat under some large books for a week or so.   The photo would just curl up on it's own so this was a very necessary step in the process.  Once the photo was flat, he setup a make shift easel/stand for the photo rather than laying it horizontal.  He got the lighting up to his liking in our office and took some photos with our Nikon SLR Digital Camera.  This photo of a photo really did work but he was only half way there.

The final part of this process was to open this photo in Photoshop and repair the tear that was still showing.  Photoshop can work miracles for sure.  Suffice it to say that the photo no longer has a tear.

William Ross

Fixing and/or repairing a photo can be quite rewarding.  When you've only got a handful of old photos of ancestors, pulling out the best of each photo can be done so well with current technology.  I feel as though I've just touched on the tip of the iceberg in photo enhancement.  I am so fortunate to have these tools at my fingertips.

Compressing A Photo

Uploading to a website or emailing a photo may force you to downsize it a bit.  Good quality photos tend to be over 600 DPI and/or 1MB or larger.  Generally, websites will not allow this size photo to be uploaded because of space.  You may even run into issues trying to email an 8MB photo to someone.

To send a "right sized" photo or complete an upload when your hand is forced to do so, you will want to compress the photo.  Photoshop Elements allows you to adjust pixels and resize the photo plus change the quality level.  In the absence of a program like this, what does one use?   I have used the compression tool found in MS PowerPoint but that is geared toward the photo living within a PowerPoint presentation or project.

Additionally, I used to use a website known as Picnik.   What happened to Picnik?  Well, if you go to that website it does say that "The Picnik is over."  It refers you to Google+ (yes, Google Plus).  I have not explored this option.  I use Google products but have not gotten into the "Google Plus" mode.  Never fear though, you can find "online quick use" compression tools.  I just "Google" it.  No pun intended.

In the end, I still have a call out for photos of my family to relatives who may be just discovering the treasures that they have hidden in a drawer, box or storage somewhere.

Photo Tips and Tricks - Part 2

With so many options available to manage photos, what works best?  There is the traditional practice of printing them out, followed by the storage of them electronically, and then there's online storage.  Whatever option you pick for photo storage depends on your purpose in using the photos.

Personally, my goal is to print and/or reproduce only the very best photos for framing and physically sharing with others.  With so many sharing options and a large volume of photos, I do not print much in the way of individual photos these days.  I do love making photo books via Shutterfly and find the process and end result quite satisfying.  I must admit that even in the face of the top quality photo book, nothing beats an actual printed photo on appropriate photo paper.

Storing photos electronically on a CD, USB drive, hard drive or the like is a great way to stay organized and manage a large volume of photos.  I find this task to be daunting at times and must continue to persevere in order to backup my photos.  As most people would agree, electronically storing anything that you value requires a duplication of it to protect from loss.  So...Backup!  Backup!  Backup!  This so definitely applies to your photos, especially old photos of your ancestors.

With my genealogy projects, printing and producing a physical book or album kind of defeats my overall purpose of sharing my family tree experience with whomever wants to read about it in the here and now online but also with my family near and far.  Don't get me wrong, at some point I will produce a bound book for my own family.  In the meantime, I work hard to not hide my family tree research away in a drawer or closet in my home for my children to find when they are old and gray.   Sharing photos and information online is my way of preserving this information including photos in an open forum.

While my blog is wide open to whomever reads my genealogy journal, my Shutterfly photo share site is exclusive to family members associated with my genealogy.  I set this share site up many months ago.  To be honest, I have not added many photos recently but will soon.  It is just sitting there for now.  In the future, I plan to continue loading photos in accordance with my overall family tree project.  That way sharing a photo becomes quick and easy.

When I upload a photo to my blog, Google places it into Picassa.  Picassa is yet another photo sharing site.  This is done by default so it really is a no brainer for me to use Picassa.  I have not used the site for separate uploads in an effort to keep that storage location exclusive to photos posted to my blog.

Storing photos can be a big deal.   What about fixing a photo?  See my next post for the results of fxing the following photo:

William Ross

Photo Tips and Tricks - Part 1

I wish that I had a photo for each and every person on my family tree.  To be able to gaze into their faces is quite an experience in and of itself, especially the very first time you lay eyes on your great great grandparents, the uncle who was a medical doctor who died young, or the uncle who saved the farm in Ireland.

My old HP scanner from circa 2000 just could not handle the job of scanning photos.  It was actually designed to scan text and documents rather than pictures.  As you can see, the scanner puts lines through the photos even after having the glass cleaned and appropriate maintenance done to the machine.  Even 1200 DPI scanning did not improve the photo quality either.  It just made the lines worse.  Anna and Dorothy Borchers deserve better, right?

Anna Marie Jackel Borchers and Dorothy Marie Borchers Flanagan Circa 1925, Napa, CA

In 2011, we purchased an Epson Perfection V500 Photo Scanner.  It is solely a scanner and not a printer combo like so many are these days.  This scanner does fabulous work.  I dare only scan photos at 1200 DPI that I will save on my own computer.  At that quality level, they take up a whole lot of space.  At 600 DPI, you will find that most websites will allow you to upload a photo of that quality.  I have found that 300 DPI is the default scanning quality level and just does not cut it.  I recommend to everyone to shoot for at least 600 DPI.  Once it is uploaded to a website it may only reflect 200 DPI or less.  

Mystery Photo....Possibly a Strehlow on my Borchers Side

Anyway, I'm not sure that I should get too technical about photo quality and size.  I have found that from a "Mega Bytes" perspective, the largest that most websites will accept is 1 MB.  Websites, in general, don't want photos hogging up the space online. My suggestion to everyone is to save your photos at high quality somewhere on a CD, USB drive, or hard drive, knowing that if you post them online, they are usually at a degraded quality.  That shouldn't stop people from sharing photos though on a website.

If your photo is too large to upload, you'll need to compress the photo.  This basically takes the quality and size of the photo down a few notches for sure.  I will revisit this topic later.

More on scanning..........Forget the photocopier or color copier these days.  Those are tools of the 1990s and Xerox in their heyday.  Trust me, I know all too well the machines that could produce so much and yet are so outdated these days.  The scanner is the way to go.

How many people know that even if you don't have a scanner at home, you can access one quite easily to produce a great photo?  The Costco's, Rite Aid's, and Walgreen's of the world still have photo departments.  I think that I even spotted one at my local Target.  I hardly ever print out photos any longer.  When I do, Costco is my choice photo lab.  Heck, they produce wonderful prints right on site at a bargain price.

The other point I'd like to make about these places is that they tend to have a scanner.  You can scan photos (provided they are not copyrighted) and get more copies.  I have not yet tested the capabilities of these machines but wonder if there is also a way to share the photos with others via an online service similar to www.costcophotocenter.com, Shutterfly (who just bought out Kodak Gallery), or Snap Fish.  I'm am thinking there is probably a share option.   You just need to have the person's email you want to send the photo to handy.

This is where I will ask my readers if they know of share options on these in-store scanners.  Does that exist?  It would certainly make sharing photos by those who do not have a scanner much easier.  If anyone has experience with this, let us all know here in the comments section of this blog post.

Smart Phone Scanning Options

With the advanced camera technology on modern day Smart Phones, I have found photos are starting to turn out pretty great.  My own iPhone is a 3GS or something like that.  The photos are OK provided you're outside in good light and close to the person that you are photographing.  Mind you, I'm not a big mobile phone person and don't even have a data plan.

On the other hand, my husband has the iPhone 4GS something or other.  He's got all the bells and whistles on his phone.  For those of you who are adept, he can even make his phone a "hot spot" for me to mooch of off the internet connection when we are together and away from home.  The other thing that his phone can do is take pretty awesome photos.  Even taking a photo of a photo produces a pretty great result.  The phone can also scan documents, photos, and text.  It's like having a hand held scanner with you all of the time.

In the absence of a full fledged scanner, these Smart Phones do the trick.  I had a relative send me the following photo/scan of a photo from her phone.  It worked out pretty darn great.

McLaughlin Family Circa 1919, Napa, CA

To be continued..........................